The Tochukaso's Written Reference Meme

The Basics
Name: "͞Names̕.̀.͟.. Th̨ey a̧re...́ i͟r̴re͏levant..͟..͠"
Nickname(s): The Tochukaso, Parasect, Grown-up (by Paras), Mushroom, Fungus, Parasite, Bugshroom, Pizza Topping!
Species: Parasect
Age: ??
Gender: The Host bug is male; there is no word in the English language that identifies the fungus' gender...

Date of Birth: ??
Star Sign: ??

Physical Information
Appearance: Its Host is a dark red, grotesquely oversized cicada nymph with blank, unblinking white eyes and a jagged mouth. Its fruiting mushroom overtakes the Host's entire back, sporting ragged yellow "spots" that's unique to each Parasect. Tucked inside the Host's back is a bundle of root-like mycelium, which is the Tochukaso's actual 'body', with branching roots lining every inch of the Host's insides. It uses these roots not only to drain nutrients, but to also keep the body functioning and alive. The roots infecting the brain is directly connected to the mycelium, and this allows the fungus to control said body as well as giving the parasite its sentience.

Height: 3' 4"
Weight: 66lbs
Build: Its large body, claws, and mushroom gives it a bulky appearance, with thin legs.

Personal Information
Nature: Rash
Characteristic: Loves to Omnomnom!

Overview: The Tochukaso is a quiet, observant individual that usually keeps to itself and does its own thing. It's calm and relaxed by default, although very defensive and violent should it deem you a threat.

In Conversation: The Tochukaso has a soft distorted voice that's a bit difficult to understand as the fungus has to manually control the voice box to speak. Given how mushrooms in general aren't made to talk, it chooses its words carefully to convey its message correctly, and has a distinct alien.... "accent", so to say. Despite its creepiness, you'll find it to be a pleasant Pokemon in conversation (usually).

At a Glance: Creepy-ass little motherfucker...
Closer Bond: He's not so bad, actually...

Likes: Food; digging; spreading its spores; food; friendly Pokemon; food; other Tochukaso; FOOD.... FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!
Dislikes: Sunlight and heat in general; being threatened/attacked; losing a chance to infect a potential Host; randomly having its mushroom bitten by Pokemon looking to get high; seeing other Parasects with their children, being all happy...
Fears: Being attacked; never having a family...
Goals: It wants to have its own little baby Tochukaso, so badly...

Combat Information
Battle Style
Attack like your life depends on it cuz it does!! <-- How the Tochukaso sees every single battle it's in. As such, it's extremely feral and unpredictable in battle.

Prowess
The Tochukaso tries to avoid fights by intimidating opponents away with loud hisses and defensive postures, but has no qualms getting its claws dirty if it has to.

Strengths
Massive claws deal massive damage, and those spores it releases from its mushroom are especially dangerous. AVOID physical contact if you can!

Weaknesses
Its giant mushroom is a vulnerable target for most Pokemon to attack; the giant fruiting body also slows the Parasect down and makes it a cumbersome fighter in small, enclosed spaces. It also has plenty of type weaknesses and Special Attacks that avoid its Effect Spores are the bane of its existence!

Ability
Effect Spore
Every time you physically harm this creature, you run the risk of being paralyzed, poisoned, or sent straight to sleep. When you break the Host's exoskeleton or the mushroom's flesh, this automatically triggers the mushroom to send the spores directly to the wound and spray onto the enemy.

Move Set
· X-Scissor
-The Parasect's large claws strike in an "X" pattern. This is its strongest attack.
· Spore
-Bright yellow clouds of sleep-inducing spores emerge from the mushroom, either shot directly onto the opponent, or to form a cloud around the Tochukaso. The latter is mostly used to hide the Parasect and keep the enemy at a distance.
· Pursuit
-A dark aura of energy surrounds it as it charges headlong into its target. It usually uses this move when its opponents retreat or when the Dark-typing proves advantageous.
· Leech Life
-The last attack it uses in battle. The Tochukaso emits a sickening green aura and bites down on its defeated foe. It then proceeds to drink their blood, returning some of its own health to recover from the battle. It slathers its opponent's wound with saliva during the process, which actually prevents the injury from getting infected, as if to show this parasite holds no hard feelings.

Stat Breakdown
Strength: 3
The Tochukaso main strength are its spores; many battles that it wins are due to those debilitating powders. In terms of physical strength, it's not particularly powerful nor particularly weak.

Intelligence: 2
Many Pokemon make the mistake of thinking the Tochukaso is nothing more than a mindless zombie, with nothing at all going on inside its head. Whilst not particularly intelligent and largely driven on instinct, it's capable of thought and emotion, just as much as any other Pokemon.

Agility: 2
Pretty slow for a Bug-type; its mushroom is quite heavy and cumbersome.

Charisma: 2
Despite its quick-to-be-defensive behavior, the Tochukaso is not a hostile creature and doesn't mind other Pokemon talking with it. The reason this is so low is that most Pokemon DON'T want to interact with it, either due to its appearance, or because they're a little bothered with the knowledge that they're actually talking to the dead body of a mutated Paras being puppeteered by a parasitic fungus...

History
The Tochukaso was 'born' the same day its Host hatched, when their parents douse the baby insect with the spores that'll eventually develop into the Tochukaso. Growing alongside the Host, the Tochukaso's mycelium was the first to develop before it started growing some roots upwards to break through the Host's skin and exoskeleton and sprout its mushrooms. Usually, mushrooms are the reproductive parts of a fungus, but the Tochukaso wasn't old enough to reproduce yet. Instead, the mushrooms' sole purpose at this point was defense and it grew so quickly because it needed to be able to defend its Host with spores as soon as possible.

Accomplishing the mushrooms, the Tochukaso then set about spreading its roots into the digestive system of the Paras Host, to more efficiently drain nutrients and grow faster. After that was accomplished, the Tochukaso started spreading its roots to the Paras' brain. Tapping into the brain, it finally gained sentience and was able to communicate with its Host and use his senses to perceive the world around it for the first time.

It learned the Paras wanted to be a doctor and use its medicinal spores to heal people. The Tochukaso decided to use this fact to manipulate its Host, so it agreed to help him if he agreed to help it grow faster by staying in dark damp places, and feeding off tree roots. The Host accepted this arrangement gratefully....

It soon grew enough to actively create cravings in the Host's body, ensuring he continue to feed off tree roots(even when he's not hungry) and stay where it's nice and dark. This fueled its growth even more and it penetrated deeper into the Host's brain, where it found that it could begin controlling the Host's body to some extent. It used this to further force the Host to do what it wants and foil his attempts to do something it doesn't want him to do.

Every time its Host expressed worry at this point, the fungus would always reassure him that it's for the best...

Eventually, it was able to manipulate his very thoughts, having the Paras devote himself entirely to its well-being and turning him into nothing more than an eating machine.

With this huge intake of nutrients, the Tochukaso exploded with growth and eventually it was ready to mature into a fully-grown Tochukaso. To do that, it had to trigger evolution....

Whilst its Host suffered great agony during the process, the Tochukaso found the experience quite pleasurable as its mushrooms grew and merged to a humongous scale and it took over the Host's brain completely.... killing the Paras that once cared so much for it...

Now a Parasect, its first order of business is to create more Paras Hosts for the next generation of Tochukaso. It found its mate and began the process..... only to find it's unable to get its mate pregnant... It tried many times with many mates, each failing to bear fruit and it learned the horrible truth: its Host is sterile....

Desperate, it attempted to infect other Parasect's children, but the protective adult Parasects refuses to allow this so easily and without a readily-available Paras Host, it decided to solve this problem a different way: start spreading its reproductive spores onto other Pokemon, OUTSIDE of its Host species!! Every Bug-type it comes across gets a dose of its spores and it hangs around to see if it'll work. So far, it's met with no success, but it keeps on trying!

Recently, it's come across a species of bug it has yet to experiment with: a Ninjask. Knowing that the Ninjask is a cicada just like its Host, it has high hopes for the infection working and after a brutal battle where the Ninjask attempted to kill it, it gained the upper hand and managed to infect him.

Now it just has to sit and wait....

Relationships
Family
Since evolution, the Tochukaso no longer maintains connections with its parents, but it does want its own family... so badly... It has many mates, each of which it still treats lovingly should they meet again. When it douses a Pokemon with its spores, it temporarily adopts them as its own child and treats them with parental love and care; even when they're vicious and hostile towards it (like a certain Ninjask), it still feels the need to watch over them and protect them, from a distance of course.

Friends
The Tochukaso doesn't have 'friends', per se... It's very friendly towards other Pokemon if they're friendly with it, but it doesn't maintain long-term bonds if it doesn't benefit the species. Plus, it travels a lot and rarely comes across a Pokemon often enough to forge a legit friendship with.

Enemies
The Tochukaso doesn't hold grudges; it's hostile to you if you're being hostile to it, and only for that particular moment. If you're friendly after, it's friendly back, although it might have some extra bit of caution since it knows you're dangerous. So instead, here's some Pokemon that's threatened it in the past...

Sokudo the Ninjask: This Ninjask was quite rude upon first meeting it, but seeing how he's so closely related to its Host species, it decided to make his maple tree its temporary rest stop as it waits for an opportunity to infect him. He's yelled at it and even tried to kill it, but it persists in staying where it is, especially when it succeeded in infecting him. It keeps a close eye on him, ready to defend itself if it has to, but it feels parental instincts towards him as well. Upon discovering that the Ninjask's Shedinja is a threat to Sokudo, its protective instincts drive it to rid that threat...

Kowai the Shedinja: This little imp has viciously attacked it on both encounters they've had. Upon defeating Kowai on the first meeting, it evaluated the Sheddy's potential as a Host before discarding the empty husk. At that moment, it decided that although the ghost can't be used as a Host, the clearly protective Shedinja would still be a benefit to keep around the potential Host-Ninjask. When the Tochukaso later broke into the house in search of food, Kowai again attacked it, but it managed to evade its attacks long enough for Kowai to get caught in one of Sokudo's booby traps. The threat gone, the Tochukaso was content to ignore it as it threw its fit, only putting it to sleep with Spore when the little Sheddy almost blew its eardrums out with a particularly distressed scream (the Tochukaso was about to eat Kowai's beloved cupcake). However, upon reading Sokudo's journal and learning of Kowai's past abusive actions, it decides that its previous assumption of Kowai being a good bodyguard of Sokudo was wrong and that Kowai's too dangerous to keep around....

Personal NPCs
Popcorn the Joltik: So far, Popcorn (both Joltik and Galvantula version) is the only NPC I drew interacting with the Tochukaso. They may or may not be canon. Anyway, upon meeting Joltik-Popcorn, the Tochukaso immediately doused the little guy with spores and followed him home with the hopes of infecting more Joltiks. Instead, it finds his room-mates... Oh well! It's infected Popcorn and that's good enough! It plans on temporarily adopting him as its own child until it knows for certain if the infection will work or not.

Popcorn the Galvantula: What I drew for Galvantula-Popcorn, the giant spider found a resting Tochukaso one night and upon getting no response from it at his approach, he took an experimental nip at its mushroom to taste if this Parasect would make a good meal... Well.... Effect Spore set in quickly and paralyzed him........ but that's not the only effect the nip had as the Galvantula unexpectedly went on a psychedelic trip... He'll think twice before pulling that stunt again... or not.... Meanwhile, the Tochukaso roused from its resting state (I'm hesitant to call it 'sleep') to feel a sharp pain on its mushroom and a totally high spider laying immobile in front of it... This just earned a blank stare for a long moment before the Parasect gets up and walks away for a new resting spot with no further reaction.